Sci-Fi Storm

Remember the reports that the 7th series of Doctor Who wouldn’t all be shown in 2012, or hat budget constraints would reduce the number of episodes? Well, as part of a larger interview with The Daily Beast, executive producer Steven Moffat addressed that very specifically: “Absolute nonsense. First of all, we are airing in 2012. The only thing that’s happening is that we’re moving a bit later…There’s lots of reasons for that that will become clear quite soon…It is certainly not a reduced episode count. Do you think the BBC would really let that happen? With an average audience of 10 million?…Doctor Who’s international profile is huge. It’s never been more successful. You’re not going to reduce a show like this. The opposite is going to happen, in fact.”

Doctor Who returns for the second half of Season 6 (at least in the U.S. on BBC America – haven’t confirmed the UK return yet) on August 27th with the episode “Let’s Kill Hitler” – but to give you just a taste, here is an awesome prequel video for the episode, just released:

TVLine has an interesting interview with Steven Moffat, producer/writer/showrunner for Doctor Who, about the Doctor and it’s sibling series, Torchwood. It seems Captain Jack doesn’t really swing both ways – show audience wise at least.

John Barrowman’s Captain Jack character is welcome back on Doctor Who – if they story is right. “When we’ve got a good story, we’ll do it,” Moffat says. “You can’t just bring somebody back and say, ‘That’s a story.’ That’s just somebody walking through a door…. I won’t be thinking, ‘How do you bring Captain Jack back?’ I’ll be thinking, ‘You know what this needs? We need to bring Jack back for it.’”

Jack would have been back for the episode “A Good Man Goes To War”, which he certainly seemed appropriate for, but he was tied up on Torchwood: Miracle Day.

But why won’t the Doctor return the favor and appear on Torchwood? Quite simply the audience for Torchwood is different. “The Doctor could never go to Torchwood,” Moffat attests. “[Torchwood EP] Russell [Davies] and I both agree on that. Doctor Who has a tremendous relationship with children in Britain. They’d want to watch Torchwood then, and it’s not really a children’s show.”

I can certainly agree with that…

The trailer for the remainder of Doctor Who‘s 6th series was shown at Comic-Con and is now available (as you can see below) – and boy, is it full of things – lots of returning enemies and a few new ones! And it is sure to make you say, “Wha?!?” And a great big, “Oops…”

Also, it announced that Series 6 will return on BBC America on August 27th.

The sixth series of Doctor Who marks a departure of sorts in a couple different ways…first, rather than air the complete season continuously as has been traditional (the exception being the special movies between the 4th and 5th series), the BBC and showrunner Steven Moffat decided to split it into two halves. And rather than wait for the second half to air, they likewise decided to split the Blu-ray/DVD release in two…with Doctor Who: Series Six, Part One being released tomorrow (July 19th) on [sfs=1136]DVD[/sfs] and [sfs=1135]Blu-ray[/sfs].
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So although the BBC has confirmed that Matt Smith will return as the Doctor for 14 more full episodes of Doctor Who, BBC journalist Lizo Mzimba is tweeting that amid some confusion at a conference where BBC One controller Danny Cohen was speaking and remarked that there wouldn’t be a “full” series of Doctor Who in 2012. Apparently he made a comment that show runner and writer Steven Moffat was busy with the next Sherlock series, which wasn’t meant to be serious, but apparently the BBC is having to follow up on the comment and is saying that the next series will be split up between 2012 and 2013 – but no idea on how and when at this point.

So it looks like there will be a long wait for our next fix, after this year’s Christmas special.

So, now that the world knows who River Song is – at least if you’ve seen “A Good Man Goes To War” – here is a bit of the director’s commentary from the scene we’ve been waiting for for years. MAJOR SPOILER WARNING: This shows that scene in tandem with the director, so if you haven’t seen the episode yet, be sure to watch it FIRST.

I can tell you in general that Steven Moffat is an evil genius though. Part of what is happening has been an idea of his for 16 years – a line River says stems almost word for word from a UseNet post he made in 1995…and the episode teases a number of times at some of the theories that have popped up over who River is…
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Following up on something I tweeted earlier today, BBC executive Sam Hodges broke the news on Twitter and Steven Moffat appeared to confirm that the BBC has commissioned 14 more episodes of Doctor Who, with Matt Smith returning as the Doctor. Since no other details have been released, I’m assuming the 14 episodes includes this year’s Christmas special.

If you’ve been waiting to actually SEE former Doctor David Tennant in his role of late night horror TV host/vampire hunter Peter Vincent in the upcoming Fright Night remake, now you can. See the trailer that debuted during the MTV Movie Awards below…the new version stars Anton Yelchin (Star Trek) as Charlie Brewster, who suspects new neighbor Jerry Dandrige (Colin Farrell) isn’t as nice guy as he seems – and is a vampire. Only no one believes him…except the host of a late-night horror movie program (Tennant).
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Hoping to see the Daleks soon? Don’t plan on it this series. Current man-in-charge Steven Moffat said in an interview for the Radio Times that he’s ordered them put to rest for a while. “There’s a problem with the Daleks,” Moffat said. “They are the most famous of the Doctor’s adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe.”